


What Terrible Angels

by teethonmydress



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Grief/Mourning, historical lesbians that's my shit that's my shit, protect sansa stark at all costs 2k16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 14:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7512508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teethonmydress/pseuds/teethonmydress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things Sansa Stark does know:<br/>(One) For the first sixteen years of her life, she has never had a friend like Margaery Tyrell.<br/>(Two) Sometimes the skies get so gray the trees lose their color.<br/>(Three) Rain serves the same purpose as shoving your face in a pillow so other girls cannot hear your weaknesses.<br/>(Four) Sometimes Margaery bites her lip when she smiles and holds Sansa’s hand during their walks and sometimes Sansa wants to kiss her or run until her lungs stop working.</p><p> </p><p>aka a oneshot wwii AU no one asked for</p><p>aka lol no one can Stop me</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Terrible Angels

**Author's Note:**

> "I love the girl. Can I not have something gentle too? The winter is outside this time; I have locked away the moon and nothing white shall hurt us. So let me have just this. Her smile in the dark. Our hands, held up against the softening light."
> 
> — Violets, by Yiwei Chai

“Your father was a traitor and a coward.” The girl’s accent is crisp and clear, the upwards snarl and hitched lip giving her the look of the stray dog Robb used to keep around. “My father says he deserved what came to him.”

 

Sansa bows her head, doesn’t say another word, just continues to thread her needle. _You are underwater._ Is what her nan used to say. _You are underwater and there is no one whose voice is loud enough to ever get to you. This does not make you weak—you are not hiding. This makes you stronger. You must be strong, my little bird._ _For your mother, your father. Dear Robb and Bran and Rickon. Be strong for them._ She’d kissed her forehead after the last time she repeated that little mantra. As they loaded her trunk onto the train, Nan’s hand, crooked with arthritis, had rested firmly at the back of her neck, holding her in place. Sansa remembered how in that moment, she never wanted the old woman to let go of her. Wanted to curl inside her old bones and live there a while. Where it was safe. Where the bombings would not reach her. Where the news of father or Robb or Jon would bounce off her like rain against pavement. Instead, she’d nodded. Taken the advice to heart.

 

And now here she was, closing her eyes and sinking into metaphorical murky depths while a girl with beautiful blonde hair and bright blue eyes threw insults at her from across the room while they practiced their needlework. She did it so pleasantly, too. Like they were discussing the weather or the best way to boil a fucking egg or what they heard the nuns gossiping about over breakfast. It doesn’t help this was the same girl that’d professed her love for Sansa in a moment of heated heavy petting. Doesn’t help that she’d retracted that very sentiment the next morning as she pulled her underclothes over her head, making sure to call Sansa just another “foolish girl” in the process. Like they weren’t of the same age. Like Sansa didn’t have her howling around her fingers just hours prior. 

 

How do you stay strong when all you want to do is sink until you disappear completely?

 

She inhales, stabs the needle through the thin canvas stretched over the embroidery board, pretends it’s the pretty girl's (she wouldn’t dignify her with a name) eye. She violently sets to work completing the jay, his brilliantly blue wing stretched over a field of flowers. (She hasn’t come nearly close to completing the field or the flowers, but in her head will be the most artistically rendered field and flowers Sister Mordane has ever seen.) Sansa can’t be like Jon or Robb, can’t force her fist through a wall every time something doesn’t go her way. Can't get into screaming matches or go off to kill other boys who force their fists through walls every time something doesn’t go their way. She’s forced to stay here, dainty and sweet, while the boys grow into the men that see it fit to bomb cities. To force girls like her and Arya out of their homes and into the countryside. _Could be worse. You could have still been home when mother got the news of father’s death. Could have seen her read the very letter itself. It could always be worse._

 

It takes a while for Sansa to process the sudden silence. 

 

It’s the feeling that all eyes are on her, sort of a prickling at the back of her neck at unwanted attention, that forces her out of the pool of water she tries to drown herself in in her mind’s eye. Back to the present. Back to the fact that Margaery Tyrell—the Margaery Tyrell, with her soft brown hair that falls in a neat braid down the center of her back, with those dark eyes that immediately spark at the mention of Yeats or Whitman or Thomas—is standing over the blonde girl, who has fallen from her chair and cradles her split lip and bloodied nose, looking up at the girl towering before her as if Margaery just declared her devotion to Satan himself.

 

“If you dare speak another word about the late Lord Stark—“

 

“Missus Tyrell!” Sister Abagal rushes to the room with a shocked sound as soon as she sees the state of the blonde girl, processes Margaery’s raised closed fist with an outraged cry. She grabs Margaery by the elbow, wrestles her out of the room. Septa Mordane trails in after her, helping the girl off the floor, murmuring words of comfort as she presses her own kerchief to the blood flowing freely from her nose.

 

Margaery winks at Sansa as she’s lead from the room by the Sister’s vice-like grip on her upper arm. Sansa hides her blush in the needlework before her, pretends all the other girls don’t look at her and whisper.

 

Her father died defending their country. She lets go of a shaking breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Her father died for the safety of her and her mother and Arya and Bran and Rickon and Robb and Jon. At least she had one friend in this whole ordeal. At least Margaery understands. (At least the Tyrell’s name was not tarnished. Sansa does not think she has the same bravery Margaery holds to defend the Tyrell family’s name.) 

 

She continues her needlework. No girl dares to bother her for the rest of the period.

 

—

Things Sansa Stark does not know:

(One) Mathematics.

(Two) The name behind the feeling she gets in her gut every time she thinks about Margaery befriending someone who does not have to bear the same weight that Sansa does.

(Three) Why her mother never returns her letters.

(Four) Why men make wars that take fathers away from daughters. Or sons away from mothers. Or brothers away from sisters. Husbands from wives. Lovers from lovers.

 

Things Sansa Stark does know:

(One) For the first sixteen years of her life, she has never had a friend like Margaery Tyrell.

(Two) Sometimes the skies get so gray the trees lose their color.

(Three) Rain serves the same purpose as shoving your face in a pillow so other girls cannot hear your weaknesses.

(Four) Sometimes Margaery bites her lip when she smiles and holds Sansa’s hand during their walks and sometimes Sansa wants to kiss her or run until her lungs stop working.

(Five) Her favorite books are the ones the Sisters frown at when they see her reading.

(Six) Cold water is good for three things:

            -Hot summer days

            -Waking yourself after a bad dream

            -Keeping yourself from slipping back into the aforementioned bad dream.

(Subpoint: Six A) Water can wash away just about anything.

 

So she stays under the freezing spray, naked and shivering, long after the girls that cornered her after dinner leave. They started talking about their maths homework as they left, the pack of them, the blonde with pretty eyes and a broken nose and features that are prettier then Sansa’s would ever be at the apex. They started talking about their maths homework and one of them even cracked a nervous joke as they ignored the thin whistle of Sansa’s blood as it washed down the drain. Maybe that was why they took to laughing so easily, maybe they are just as scared as she is.  

 

Sansa is pretty sure her wrist is broken—her fault, not theirs. She tried to break her fall when the blonde one, her nose still swollen from Margaery’s attack, shoved her to the floor. Who said girls couldn’t be vicious in their antics? Who said they couldn’t play and fight and snarl with the blind bold nature of their brothers? The broken skin of her lip begs to differ. The water runs pink. (Added to "Things Sansa Stark does know": no amount of powder was going to cover up the bruise she can feel developing on her cheek.) Sansa lets her hair fall around her in an auburn sheath, brings her scraped knees to her chest.

 

This world was heavy enough. She was heavy enough. Sansa tilts her head back into the spray, presses her back against the tiled wall. She takes the nail of her thumb against the tops of her feet. Watches her flesh turn white then spring back to life again, little crescent marks decorating the dip of cold skin between her toes. Once, Father had taken them to the south of France and Arya’s skin had gone the color of cooked shrimp. Sansa and Bran had taken turns pressing little patterns into the tops of her thighs while she whined on the little cot in the hotel. Jon had laughed at their little sister’s foolishness. Mother scolded the lot of them for “harassing” her. But she smiled while she did it. And Father had laughed. Great and big and from his stomach.

 

Sansa closes her eyes, basks in the memory as the cold water traces her ribs, curls around her lungs—it’s easier to breath this way, curled into the junction of two walls, tile tracing geometric paths into the skin of her thighs, the small of her back. She digs the nail of the thumb into the fleshy space between her first two toes. The hotel had marble floors and a doorman that smiled at her a little to wide (something mother muttered about as they unpacked their things) and the people all spoke so fluidly and Sansa wished they’d just stayed there. That life was so bright, so full of sandy beaches and nights of her and Arya’s whispering—they’d actually gotten along, past the whole sun burn thing. It was good. They were happy.

 

Here, the sun only shone on occasion. The grassy hills lost their novelty quickly, and the grand halls of Mother’s Heart Academy were less like the romantic castles from her novels than she’d previously believed. But you’re here for a reason. To be kept safe while they play out their little war—keep strong. She was water. She was washed down the drain. She—

 

“You know I can’t keep saving you.”

 

Sansa jolts at the sound, attempts to cover herself by crossing her arms over her chest.

 

Margaery looks at her with something between sorrow and anger. She must look pitiful—bloodied, hair in her eyes, curled in on herself like some wretched gargoyle, if the water weren’t so cold Margaery would be able to see the blush that rises through her whole body. (Luckily it’s washed down the drain, just as quickly as her little sobs.)  Sansa turns away, hides against the steady presence of the wall. “You don’t have to. You don’t need to.”

 

Margaery heaves an irritated sigh, stomps over and turns off the water. Sansa grits her teeth but refuses to move from where she was huddled. ( _Let me be miserable in peace, goddamn you._ Sansa wraps her arms around her knees, hides her face in the small space this makes.) Her hands are warm against Sansa’s shoulders, she kneels beside her, the navy of her skirt turning black as soon as it hits the water still falling down the drain. She curses under her breath once the cold gets to her, forcibly pulling Sansa into her lap.

 

And Sansa breaks. Naked and shivering and whimpering—she breaks because _she is weak she is weak_ and Margaery’s arms are so warm and her neck smells like the perfumes Mr. Tyrell sends in his letters to her and it smells like the south of France and everything holy and warm and she rubs Sansa’s back and whispers reassurances into her ear. She presses her forehead against the side of Margaery's neck and breathes in soft white cotton of her blouse, the calm rise and fall of her breast compared to Sansa’s frantic dyspnea, the delicate ivory of her rose-shaped locket. In a steady admission to guilt, she cups her hand over the side of Margaery’s neck. Feels her pulse, steady and slow, against her palm. She was getting thinner, as were the rest of the girls—rations only depleted as the war raged on. Her collarbones looked cut from stone. (She remembers that almond scones are Margaery's favorite, she must remember that. She doesn’t know why but it’s important.) 

 

They both pull back at the same time, Sansa’s injured wrist cradled against her chest.

 

And just like that, Margaery leans down and presses her lips against Sansa’s own. Impulsive. Messy. Teeth knocking against each other until they settle with Sansa’s fingers tangled in what used to be Margaery’s neat little braid, Margaery’s hands pressing against the small of her back. Pressing her closer. And it’s all Sansa can do to keep from laughing. Or crying even harder. Maybe both, maybe she just wants to sink into Margaery, to not be able to tell the difference between both their fluttering heartbeats.

 

Once, Father had taken her to the south of France and she had danced with a boy and after her skin had felt warm and she couldn’t stop herself from smiling into her pillow for the rest of the night. Once, she breathed through her mother’s body as Catelyn promised her the world, as she had done with Robb, and as she had yet to do with Arya and Bran and Rickon as well. Once, she’d fallen asleep crying on the couch when the war had been declared in the morning’s paper and Robb had tucked her into bed, and Arya had crawled into bed beside her and she woke up surrounded by the people she loved.

 

Once, Sansa Stark fell in love with a girl who held her as if she was a holy messenger destined to fall to earth. Once, two souls collapsed and reformed, one unintelligible from the next.

 

This is only the beginning of that story.  

 


End file.
